Brooke Green is the winner of the 2019 UNSW Jonathan Blakeman National Composition Prize, the University of New South Wales has announced. The composer and viola da gambist is the second ever winner of the $5000 biennial award, created from an endowment from UNSW’s former vice-president of finance and operations, Jonathan Blakeman, a passionate new music enthusiast, who died in 2014.

Brooke Green

Green’s winning work, From the Heart, was chosen by a panel of three “for its creativity, originality and technical competence,” UNSW said in a statement. The work was inspired by the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and the push for a First Nations Voice enshrined in the constitution and the creation of a Makarrata Commission.

“The piece starts with a lament,” Green said. “It was so heart-rending to see the many advocates of the statement who were trying to get things happening but were suffering endless enquiry, so I put that element of frustration and different voices with different agendas into the piece. But there’s also a sense of joy because the way the statement came together, with the gathering of everyone involved in the heart of Australia, Uluru,...